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That’s why I’m rushing to the rescue of Ford Nation, by rallying to a couple of your favourite causes: casinos, and the war on cars.

My family is behind you. When you made retching sounds and faked a barf at a formal news conference this week, my nine-year-old girls were charmed. They made vomiting noises at home that night.

What could I say? The girls argued they were merely aping the mayor of Canada’s biggest city. Last month they patted each other’s bottoms under the guise of mayoral greetings and gave me the same press lines: role-playing, inspired by their new role model.

Mr. Mayor, you are getting a bum rap on road tolls. Like I said, you’re not alone.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath is with you on this. So is Tory Leader Tim Hudak. These opposition politicians are mindful of your winning “gravy train” campaign that made mincemeat of car taxes and made you mayor.

At your news conference, you pointed out to the pointy-headed reporters that there are much easier ways to build subways and roadways. You not only pretended to throw up, you threw out some fresh ideas.

Like casinos. Everyone wins with casinos. Gamblers get their jackpots. Governments get their cut. Hospitals are helped. And there’d be plenty of cash left over from this open pit goldmine to pave our new roads with gold and dig subways deep.

That’s why you retch over road tolls and salivate over slot machines. But you are overreaching.

Under a best-case scenario, the city’s cut could be as much as $100 million a year from a new casino. Here’s the problem: Metrolinx, the provincial transit agency, says we need $2 billion a year to bankroll its 25-year, $50 billion roadmap.

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Oops. That means casino revenues would generate a mere 5 per cent of what’s needed to unblock gridlock and expand transit. And the money has already been spoken for, allocated to other city expenditures. You’re playing with numbers.

That said, casinos are facing a stacked deck. All kidding aside (and you may have detected a somewhat satirical tone up to this point), I can’t help wincing at some of the anti-casino arguments that conflate morality, social stability and urban planning.

But we already have gambling in Toronto — at Woodbine, where handicappers bet on horses and people play the slots — so why are casinos so corrosive? I wouldn’t plunk one of those supersized atrocities on the waterfront, but why not an expanded Woodbine or a mega-casino in Vaughan?

I don’t gamble, but I would never impose my own snobbery on recreational gamblers who want to have some fun closer to home. While I don’t minimize the risk to compulsive gamblers, I wouldn’t overstate the arguments — any more than I would for alcoholism and the panacea of prohibition.

What we need, Mr. Mayor, is an honest debate — whether on casinos or transportation taxes — not just from you, but everyone else. The bottom line is money.

We live in a society where your NDP and Tory allies keep propagating an anti-tax ethos that deprives the treasury of reliable revenues. Hence our inelegant addiction to gambling — be it lotteries that impoverish people, or casinos that scandalize people. Equally, it explains our need for new road tolls or other revenue streams allocated to transit and highways.

There is no turning back from gambling and no turning our noses at it. Nor can we keep running away from road tolls or other taxes. And that’s no joke.

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